Life with Chief Justice Roberts

Jane Sullivan Roberts, on roots, faith, family and her husband.

“Then he was a fireman in a New York City public school, and then he settled into being a mechanic for electric ice machines for a post office.”

Jane’s parents both insisted their children get the best education, especially the girls. They had seen many women left bereft when the man of the house lost his job or was killed in workplace accidents, which were very common then. Little wonder then that Straight A student Sullivan found herself among the first class of girls ever to enter Holy Cross College in Massachusetts and later went to Georgetown Law School.

Holy Cross was an experience that defined her. 

“The first week I had a date every day, one day there were two dates and I called my mother and said this is too much. To go from an all-girls school, it was too much. But things settled down, the girls were very talented and serious and everybody got down to studies. The college could not have been more welcoming. We constantly had meetings in the dorms, to see how progress was. And the professors were very welcoming, at a substantive, academic, intellectual level.”

She worked her way through high school and college. “I always had jobs. When I was 15 I worked in Ocean City, New Jersey, as a waitress and hostess one summer, and later I got a job in a restaurant in a Jewish neighborhood, working 5-8 every night. It was perfect because I could go to school, work and then go out on a date afterwards. But I made enough money to cover my books and uniforms.”

Even in college as through her entire life, Ireland was never far from her thoughts. “The first trip that I remember was in second grade, in 1962, and we stayed in the house that my mother grew up in in Charleville, County Cork. The family had six children, relatives roughly our age, so we had lots and lots of fun. I just remember the freedom, because we could just run out the back of my grandma’s house. She lived in town, but right behind her house was farmland. The town was basically just one street. We jumped the hedges, and played in the fields.

“Here I was, a Bronx kid, and in the summer in Ireland we could milk cows. It was just terrific. We went hiking together with my cousins, up the hills, and I remember banana and mayonnaise sandwiches. I still love that. Then, there were always the parties, and everyone had their party piece. We visited the sights, the castles.”

Her love of Ireland is not lost on her husband.

John Roberts is of Welsh, Czech and Irish stock. His Celtic genes emerge at the Willie Clancy Summer School in Ireland where he has danced on his frequent trips to the Emerald Isle. He also regularly attends ceilis and can dance the “Walls of Limerick” with the best of them, according to Jane.

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Nster.com